Jailed drugs boss has £10,000 rolex seized

Drugs boss Paul McIntyre. Picture: Contributed

A GANGSTER who masterminded deliveries of cocaine and heroin from his cell at Saughton Prison has had a £10,000 gold Rolex confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Paul McIntyre was jailed for nine-and-a-half years in January for directing the illegal operation while serving a 45-month prison term for drug offences.

Prosecutors moved to seize illegal profits from McIntyre, 28, and a confiscation order was made at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday.

Advocate depute Barry Divers asked the court to record McIntyre’s benefit from criminal conduct at £153,000 and seize his “realisable assets” of £39,725, which included the valuable timepiece.

Due to its value, the watch is believed to be a Rolex Day Date or similar model.

The court heard that McIntyre had “orchestrated” three drugs shipments, which were intercepted by police, by mobile phone from prison. One was stopped on the City Bypass, near Dreghorn.

Police had been targeting the supply network bringing drugs to Scotland from Liverpool in 2010 and 2011, and officers recovered almost 11kg of Class A drugs worth nearly £850,000.

McIntyre has family connections to a crime gang known as The Baker’s Green Boys in his home city of Liverpool, whose members were sentenced to jail terms totalling more than 300 years.

A brother of former boxing champ Alex McKinnon, who was killed in the Marmion pub shooting in 2006, was jailed for his role in McIntyre’s gang.

Isaac McKinnon, 34, was sentenced to five years and eight months for using his Niddrie home to arrange supplies of heroin and cocaine.

McIntyre ran the criminal outfit from his cell, using mobile phones smuggled into Saughton and Addiewell jails. Drug consignments were collected from the home of gang member David Hughes, 48, in Huyton, Liverpool, where they had been mixed, weighed and packed.

When police raided Hughes’ house in a joint operation with Merseyside Police, officers found a press, a mould with plates, scales and a 25kg drum of bulking agent, indicating the large scale of the illegal scheme.

McKinnon was tasked by the gang with arranging for the drugs to be sold from his home. He also controlled courier Stephen Corns, who is serving a near six-year sentence for drug supply.

Hughes was given eight years while another gang member, Scott Gardner, 29, was caught by police with heroin with a street value of £175,000 and jailed for five years.

Lindsey Miller, head of the Crown Office’s Serious and Organised Crime Division, said: “Paul McIntyre contributed to the operation of a drugs network from behind bars in Edinburgh. His conviction for the supply of illegal drugs means that he is deemed to have had a ‘criminal lifestyle’ under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

“The money will be added to the £60 million already gathered from proceeds of crime and will be reinvested through the Cashback for Communities programme.”

Taxi driver’s murder trial under way

A TAXI driver has gone on trial accused of murdering a man by running him over in a car park.

Stephen Nolan, 48, denies murdering Ebrahim Aryaei Nekoo, who was found with fatal injuries at the parking area at Saughton Park on March 24 last year. As the trial got under way at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, a dog walker described how he found private hire driver Mr Nekoo lying covered in blood with his trousers ripped.

Witness Andrew Minto, 63, told the jury that he phoned the police. Nolan is alleged to have assaulted Mr Nekoo, of Carrick Knowe Hill, by repeatedly driving a vehicle at him, causing it to collide with the driver’s door of his vehicle and strike him on the body before driving over him.

Nolan, of Redhall Place, Longstone, has denied a further six charges, including allegations of attacks carried out while he drove a taxi.

On the night of the alleged murder, Nolan is accused of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner at the forecourt of a petrol station in Edinburgh by approaching Mr Nekoo’s vehicle, opening the driver’s door and attempting to stop him closing it, shouting at him, and adopting an aggressive and intimidating manner.

The charges further allege that on September 4, 2011 in Howe Street, Nolan behaved in a threatening or abusive manner by stopping his taxi alongside Mr Nekoo’s vehicle, shouting and swearing at him and pulling in front of his vehicle, causing them to collide.